Rapid Digital Transformation: Developing Effective Digital Partnerships

Partnering with insurtechs, non-insurance companies or even other carriers is becoming more common as insurers build a digital ecosystem for cooperation. This session will explore how to go about identifying strategic needs and building the guardrails that ensure success in these agreements.

Transcription:

Ruth Fisk: (00:09)
Good afternoon. Now we'll start our second track in today's conversation regarding rapid digital transformation. And certainly we all know as an industry, how key partnerships are, whether that's through our distribution channels or part of our ecosystem that we depend on to deliver our capabilities, to manage our customers' expectations. So I'm very pleased to announce and to introduce a distinguished panel today, our moderator will be Donald Light from CELENT and he is joined by Leslie Marshall. She's the VP and Head of Distribution and Marketing at Chubb. Sebastien Bert, who is the Co-head Strategic Partnerships Americas from Swiss Re. And then we have Matthew Gibson, Head of Strategic Distribution Initiatives at John Hancock Insurance. And I know that you're really gonna enjoy today's panel discussion. So over to you, Donald.

Donald Light: (01:06)
Okay. Thank you very much. So I'd like to just talk my over a tiny bit about myself. And so I'm a director in our north America property casualty practice, and among other things, I focus on ecosystems and platforms, which is related to our topic today. And as I was thinking about, what we should talk about, how we should approach it, I realized that have really effective partnerships first. You can, ensure can have them internally with technology, which gets you pretty far down the road to be in digital, but to be truly digital, you have to reach outside of your company and start interacting with other companies. So that gets into the external partners of different kinds. And we'll get into a lot more detail with that. So I'd like to, as you've heard the names and the titles of our panelists, but in turn, I'd like to ask them to kind of introduce themselves and tell a little bit more about their role in their company. So I'll start with Matt at the end.

Matthew Gibson: (01:57)
Yeah. So, I'm Matt Gibson, I'm with, John Hancock Insurance out of Boston. And my role is primarily focused on how we probably say about 70% of what I do is focused on how we distribute the John Hancock vitality solution across the, organization at, at large. And the balance of the work that I focus on is how we bring in and evaluate new opportunities, different partnerships on how we might scale the vitality platform across either new distribution channels different opportunities within the program itself and kind of really moving forward with, with what we're doing with vitality and globally, we refer to kind of the space that we're doing with vitality, be we call it behavioral insurance or behavioral linked insurance, cuz we do vitality in the United States as well as in Canada with manual life vitality. And then in our Asia markets, we have a platform called manual life move which operates very similarly.

Donald Light: (02:57)
Okay. Thank you. And Leslie

Leslie Marshall: (02:59)
I'm Leslie Marshall and I run distribution and marketing at Blink by Chubb and Blink by Chubb is our consumer facing digital portfolio of products, really designed to address the insurance needs of the life people live today. So our products are, more transactionally based and really they're the perfect solution for partnership. And I'm really excited about the session today to talk about how we approached it, we just celebrated our first blink birthday or our blink anniversary in April and really happy to be here, Don.

Donald Light: (03:37)
Okay, great. Thank you. And Sebastien.

Sebastien Bert: (03:40)
Hi everybody. Sebastien Bert I'm with Swiss Re and I co-head a group called strategic partnerships. So we were created back in 2019 and we're part of the reinsurance division, and it was in response to all the new entrants that were coming in the marketplace that were not insurance companies so, we enabled that strategy through re-insurance, but also we deploy our services, which we call solutions on helping these companies go to market and grow. And lastly, given where we are, and we are a B2B company, we help these companies partner with other parts of their value chains like fronting companies, TPAs policy, admin systems. So our group is responsible for originating vetting and bringing these deals through the swissy machine. I like to call it and helping them get to market.

Donald Light: (04:36)
Okay, great. So if we can take the conversation one level down, and if you could, I'm gonna ask each panelist in turn to sort of describe their company's partnership strategy and goals. So Leslie, back to you.

Leslie Marshall: (04:51)
Sure. So when we were, we were thinking about blink, our products are standalone products and that was new for me in the industry. I worked in the majority of my career in traditional insurance agency channel, where if you had a product, it was, you know, it was your company's product. And it would, you know, if you had an, some other feature, it would be an add-on endorsement of, or something like that. So when it came to blink, really we had blue sky, there was an opportunity for us to approach a number of different channels. And, I like to call it our B C D E strategy. So that's great. If you grew up on Sesame street, it's really easy to remember and it is affinity. So non-insurance natives broker enabled who are incredibly valuable to our value chain carrier, which for me was a first to be able to partner with other carriers digital platforms, as well as direct to consumer and employee benefits.

Leslie Marshall: (05:58)
So, that ABCDE strategy, we really have focused on use cases and tests and all of those channels and have introduced partnerships in all of them. So our primary objective is to meet our consumers where they are. So it enhances or enables a service that they are already or a product that they are already buying. We did a lot of research around this and the new generation of insurance buyers wants to get that product and have it be relevant and contextual to something else that they're doing. They're not like Matt and I were talking backstage people don't wake up in the morning and go, let's get some insurance, you know, that's just not how you saw your day. Great that they did. Wouldn't it be? It'd be so awesome, but they don't. And so they know about it. They don't know when they need it or why they need it. So if we're able to bring it to them when they're doing something else, we think that that's kind of the holy grail of our future.

Donald Light: (06:59)
Right. So, Leslie I've worked with some of your colleagues in blink and yeah, sometimes in those conversations, it looked like blink was to some degree aimed at sort of a particular segment of potential policy holders that may not have been engaging with Chubb through other means. Is that to what degree is that correct? Or how, how would you characterize types of individuals that you're trying to reach.

Leslie Marshall: (07:20)
That that's a fair, fair point. Don, when we first, launched, we did a lot of our research with millennial buyers. So ages 24 to 39 now they're aging. So they're 26 to 41, and, and that's really where we focused because we felt that they were an underserved market but what we found through these amazing strategic partnerships is that the products address needs of all ages. I my parents were some of the first blink policy holders and just a

Donald Light: (07:51)
Coincidence

Leslie Marshall: (07:52)
Yeah. And also my daughter. So, you know, she's 25, my parents are proudly in their seventies and, they both have needs that blink, blink cyber in particular addresses. So it's, it's been really nice to see the

Donald Light: (08:06)
Expansion. So you're kind of aiming one, one segment and it got broader, which is not a bad thing.

Leslie Marshall: (08:11)
Yeah. And I think that, I think the key that the feature that they all hold in common is they wanna transact digitally they don't wanna call somebody on the phone. They wanna get the policy at two o'clock in the morning. If you know, it happens to be offered to them then, and that's really, and that's interesting cuz with a partnership that we have, I we have this tracker and every time a policy is sold, I get, a message on Microsoft teams and I watch it just kind of ring it's a little bit addicting. I'm not gonna lie. but we see people buying policies at three o'clock in the morning and people buying them at, 11 o'clock at night or 12 o'clock in the afternoon. And that's because it's digital, they don't have to wait.

Donald Light: (08:53)
Okay, great. So I'd like to ask the same question for next to Sebastian, your company's strategic partnerships and I know Sebastian, everybody I'm sure knows Swiss re but kind of Swiss in a partnership context and why, and how are you going, why are you going about it? How are you going about it? If you could give us a bit of depth on that?

Sebastien Bert: (09:12)
Yeah, sure. I mean we're a very large organization, so I don't wanna speak for the entire firm, but the reason why we created strategic partnerships in the U.S Is there were so many new entrants, like I said at the intro that we're not insurance company and the thing that was really interesting about these new entrants and specifically, we're seeing a lot of InsureTechs that take the form NGAs and also this whole space called embedded insurance, right. Where corporates are coming in and they're doing affinity type of business, but they're doing more than that, and what we found really attractive and why we created this group and go after this business more is they gave us access to risk pools that we traditionally didn't see, so I love Chubb and I love Hancock because they're great customers, but they don't see us everything, right.

Sebastien Bert: (09:59)
And these new, distribution channels, they do give access to stuff that we don't see through the traditional channels the other thing that that's really important to us is we get a front seat at the table of trends that are happening in the marketplace around technology and how consumers are buying insurance. And we all know that's evolving, right? So being in the back of the value chain or the back of the bus being Swiss free, it's a very attractive proposal because these companies are like, Hey, we want you to be a foundational partner and be there alongside with us, so I'd say those are the two big things, and lastly, and we all crave, this is getting access to data, right? And you're forming these partnerships. You're getting, you know we don't we don't have a spikit into these data sources, but these companies do, and really good partnerships are the ones that are willing to share that data with us. And we can learn alongside with them and help them understand what the data needs.

Donald Light: (11:03)
Okay. Yeah. Data, data, data. I mean, it's all over. It's very, very important. Now data and analytics, you got to do both,

Sebastien Bert: (11:10)
And by the way, I wanna say that I love B, C, D. I'm gonna use that now on, I'm gonna steal that from the Leslie and get you some royalties

Leslie Marshall: (11:17)
Feel free and you'll gimme a free COVID test in. Yeah.

Sebastien Bert: (11:22)
You might

Leslie Marshall: (11:22)
Sell me a COVID test. He's like, oh, I got a ton.

Donald Light: (11:25)
I'll Sell you one. If anyone would like to move back a few rows that's

Leslie Marshall: (11:28)
No, we don't need them. We're fine.

Donald Light: (11:29)
Okay so, Matt you and your initial comments, talk a little bit, talked about vitality and it's possible some people in the audience may not know that much about vitality. So maybe just a little intro or overview of vitality, and then more about how Hancock is approaching partnerships with yeah. With regard

Matthew Gibson: (11:48)
To absolutely. So I think the, component, when I don't mean to just cavalierly just assume the entire audience here understands what I mean, when I say John, hang ho vitality, what we're doing with John hang ho vitality is actually, we've partnered with vitality. They are a subsidiary of discovery, life and health out of Johannesburg. Their us headquarters is right in the loop in Chicago. And, fundamentally what vitality is at the end of the day. It is a technology enabled health and wellbeing program that we basically operate alongside our insurance products that we offer to consumers. It provides them with incentives, premium savings access to really the latest and greatest technologies through the partnerships that we have again, throughout the program itself by customers choosing to participate in the program, they can drive the program itself, the benefits and enhanced rewards within the program.

Matthew Gibson: (12:44)
And, to your point, right? Like I love that if people talked about insurance, right? But I think to even greater the point, most people know very little about insurance and how it works even more so on the life side, because it's a little bit more complicated from an underwriting process. Most consumers look at insurance through the lens of, excuse myself, an example. I get put into a risk pool, risk pool of all the other preferred 41 year old non-smokers. And I just pay the aggregate worst risk of that price of that risk pool. That's just the way insurance works always. But what vitality does is it allows me to say John Hancock, I am not the worst risk in that risk pool. I can provide the you by choosing to engage in the vitality program and subsequently reduce my premium cost over time, not too dissimilar to like a safe driving program that may exist in the auto space, but from a Hancock perspective, we approach really our, our partnerships through three different lenses. First being through the vitality program, through the technology companies, health companies, science companies that we work with to provide those solutions and program enhancements to the program. The second component really is how we do business. So partnering with, companies like claretto and human API to really streamline the new business underwriting process for both the customer and the brokers that we work with. And then the final one really is our distribution partners, because we are not a direct to consumer organization. We work exclusively through brokerage. So that's with all of the BGAs that we work with with more recently with some more direct marketer organizations. So we tend to approach what we're doing from John Hancock, through the lens of the bigger picture of, we fundamentally believe that we should be making life insurance easier to buy and fun and engaging to own all while helping customers live a longer healthier and better, better life.

Donald Light: (14:44)
So, man I'm gonna ask a follow up question. You, you mentioned there's a high level of similar similarity between what you're tracking with vitality participation on the one hand and level of risk, risk of death, if it's, life insurance we see that in telematics it's kind of, it's a new way, insuring of point of view on what kind of risk they're actually put in on their books. Are, you making premium reductions depending on what kind of information you getting in vitality, or is it basically benefits that don't affect the actual premium payments?

Matthew Gibson: (15:21)
So actually we do both. There is so mechanically the way the program works is customers complete things that they may be doing to live a longer, healthier life, being it, getting their COVID shot, getting their annual, physical, buying, healthy food at the grocery store, going to the gym, wearing a wearable and getting however many steps or calorie burns. You get that day, those earn new vitality points, the vitality points then drive a status much. Like we all probably flew here, airline status programs, the higher, the status, the greater, the premium benefits and the other rewards that unlock within the program I will say that we have through through the seven years since we've had the program a little of our 93% of the John hock vitality customers who have registered have actually received some level of policy enhancement. So it's above and beyond the apple watch Fitbit that we provide within the program itself, but actually policy level enhancements

Donald Light: (16:17)
And actually a side light. Your president kind of brought vitality in, right?

Matthew Gibson: (16:24)
Yeah. So, the president and CEO of the insurance business Brooks tangle, before becoming CEO, he was in charge of our strategy team, and he really brought vitality in from, from South Africa to hear what we're doing in the

Donald Light: (16:37)
States. Okay. So anybody who's career minded out there in the audience think about possibly taking the partnership route, so.

Matthew Gibson: (16:44)
Absolutely.

Donald Light: (16:45)
Okay, great. So, I have another question that will address to all the panel, but in turn, so we've talked some about types of firms types of partnership firms you're, you're looking at and trying to work with, but what are the incentives that you're you're offering? And it's, it's always I think a fundamental issue in partnership relationships. It has to be a win-win. So what kinds of partners are you looking for and how do you structure at least at a high level win-win so I'm gonna start asking Sebastian that topic.

Sebastien Bert: (17:16)
Yeah. So as I mentioned before we work a lot with embedded insurance partners. So think about like corporates brands that want to embed insurance within their products and services. And the other segment that we work a lot with is inure tech MGAs. So the thing, two things these companies have in common is one, they want to distribute insurance products, but they don't necessarily want to be a carrier. Right so if you think about partnerships, it's, getting somebody at the other side of the table that does something that you don't want to do. Right, and it's, we're seeing this phenomenon more and more where companies like, Hey, I'm really good at one part of the value chain, but I don't want to, you know invest, or sink a bunch of capital. I can't pull out easily, or deal with all the regulatory stuff.

Sebastien Bert: (18:01)
Cause I'm not good at that. Right. I wanna stick to my niche so that's, you know, one of the primary incentives to, to work with us and also with carrier partners, The other thing that I find really important in this space is, you know, when you talk about partners, you know, there are vendors and then there are partners, right? And all these companies are like, Hey, we got to stitch together, you know, in a stack to get this product out. And there are numbers, tons, and tons of parties. You can talk to look at the floor over there. I mean, you can go down and, you know there's, there's partnerships all over the place, but the ones that really are defined, I think are key. And we try to be ourselves in that category, as partnerships is like, can we bring something beyond just the core base?

Sebastien Bert: (18:51)
So obviously everybody knows this as reinsurance, but where we're shifting to is like solutions right. And we're a service company. So when people approach us, we try to look at the angles like, Hey, we're gonna fuel your product through our risk capital, but what are the other services that we can provide you? Right. Data analytics technology, you know and also, you know, consulting services. And I I'd say the last thing, and this is similar to like venture funding you know, I like to see is like, how big is your Rolodex? Because, and, can you give advice to your partner? And whenever we go through these engagements and that's something that's really key to, you know, setting apart when they're trying to choose, like who's the right partner to work with, I think if they work with somebody that's been down the road and can give advice, it's like the dos and don'ts and the pitfalls that's this new entrance is coming that's super valuable. So you know, that one plus one equals three kind of thing really matters in, you know, making a win-win type of relationship.

Donald Light: (19:55)
So, so let me follow up and, you know, I'm not trying to probe on, you know, show, pull out your last three contracts so I can see the terms, but well, I could ask, but I don't think, I don't think that'll happen to how does Swiss Reed think about the financial aspects, the commercial aspects of your partnerships? Is there a lot of variability? I mean, I suppose there is up and down the value chain, but how do you, what do you bring to the table? What are your expectations of what you'll settle, settle, settle on with your partners?

Sebastien Bert: (20:29)
So that's a great question and so, I like what I call table stakes, right? It's not just money, right? It's like what, it's important for each party when you come to the table, and this is before you even get into contracts, right? What's the straw manager or partnership, and we've come like we've, we've had some failures in the past because like, we didn't throw these things on the table earlier enough. And then we found out something that was like really important to them and something we couldn't do or vice versa, so, you know, whatever, and enumeration is really important, right? You only got a dollar a premium and it's like, how's it gonna work between everybody? Right. Because everybody's got to cut, I know I don't work for pro bono and I know you don't, and I know you don't so and you know, so everybody has to have a return on their investment. So whatever you come up with, that has to be reflective on the contract because you can have a handshake, but if you don't have anything in writing and these are supposed to be long partnerships are longer than a year, right. If it's not longer than a year, then it's not a partnership, it's just a transaction, so, you know, start with the, the fundamentals and then put that in writing

Matthew Gibson: (21:40)
It was, if I was buying a software license, you know, this isn't the SAS company that we're dealing with, this is a long term deal. It's not just like a one year contract of a Salesforce seat that I'm buying. Right.

Donald Light: (21:52)
Okay. All right. Interesting. So same, same question to Leslie. So kind of what kinds of firms are you looking at working with and how do you, how do you approach the kind of win-win relationship, which of course has a financial side, but has multiple other dimensions?

Leslie Marshall: (22:10)
Yeah, it's great. Because I think we all know in the insurance space we have regulatory blockers for non-insurance entities, right? So we can't have non-insurance entities selling or soliciting insurance products, which my attorneys and compliance team remind me of daily. But I can recite it. And so we have to get creative on really what that non-insurance backed, partnership would look like, but I'll start with the insurance backed ones because they, the broker backed ones, because they have been quite interesting. And our very first, partnership that we announced with blink and this is public, so I'm not disclosing anything I'm not supposed to, was with U S and, my husband is a veteran, so I had an incredible connection, to what they do for their members. And, so we started the conversation and really how it all came to be.

Leslie Marshall: (23:12)
Is that exactly what Sebastian said? They knew that they needed a cyber product in their, customer or their member offering, but they didn't wanna devote the time in capital to constructing it. And they wanted it at speed. So they didn't wanna wait through all of the regulatory approval process. And we had already done that. And so, we were able to reach, a great agreement with them, I have to say, and this is, you know, not a commercial, but they are tremendous in terms of their willingness to ideate, their willingness to optimize, they have really, really been a strong partner for us. And then we've, you know, other ones that we've done, we just announced a partnership with first connect, which is hippo's agency. and I have to tell you guys, you know, I know AAT is here.

Leslie Marshall: (24:03)
I don't know if he's in the audience, but, we had started with them, you know, I had had them on my list. I think we all have that, right. Everybody has a pipeline and they have all of their, like, you know, top partners that they like to go, you know, pursue. And I had had them on the list a long time. And I, finally said, to our head of digital global digital officer, I said, I need you to reach out to Asif and see if we've got, if it's the right time. And it was, and I can tell you from the time we agreed that we were gonna move forward to the time that we launched on their platform, including changes in APIs, new capabilities, contracting, it was six weeks. And that set the standard for me going forward. I thought from that point forward, we have to find partners that have intent, alignment, commitment.

Leslie Marshall: (24:58)
And it's just been a great journey. And, you know, we've also partnered with startup companies that are looking for, opportunities to bring their solutions to market. We're very big proponents of, digital innovation and startups. And so we've taken you know, we've taken the journey with some very new companies and what happens there, the value to both of us is that we get to learn a lot. We get a lot of access to data and they get access to a brand that we're quite proud of and a product that they can have confidence in. And yes, money is always there and we're always talking about it, but, we hope that it goes beyond that because we believe that it will last longer if our intent is focused on the customer.

Donald Light: (25:48)
Okay. So you, you mentioned two partners, U S and hippo. One is quite large and established and hippo is, is large for insure tech, but not large for the industry from a, this is not a deep dive technology, session. No, but was it from just a tying together integrating communicating? Was it relatively easy for both and, working with a very large established company and working with a insure tech, bonafide insure tech?

Leslie Marshall: (26:19)
Yeah, that's a great question. The technology is the easiest part.

Donald Light: (26:23)
Okay.

Leslie Marshall: (26:24)
Whether it was the insured, whether it was hippo first connector, whether it was U S, the technology was the part where we all were aligned, the challenges, frankly, and Matt and I were talking about, this are more in the marketing, in the customer, how we're going to go to market with the customer. You know there's a lot of diligence in US around protection of their data, you know, we did a single sign on, experience for them that requires a lot of, you know, checkpoints to make sure that everything is performing according to plan. And then contracting is very, if anyone's ever worked with this incredible company, their contracting is, is very sophisticated it's probably the word I would use and, and it can take a long time, but the great part about it is we work with a team that never gave up and, okay. But, our new API world makes tech part really easy.

Donald Light: (27:26)
Yeah. I mean it's a major change from even four or five years ago. in terms of integration. So, yeah. So, Matt, over two, so question is, which are, do you have a set of outside firms that you're working with in vitality or kind of what's the there's Hancock there's vitality, and then what else is

Matthew Gibson: (27:48)
Kind of the partners that we.

Donald Light: (27:49)
Who else is on the table

Matthew Gibson: (27:50)
Program? Right. So I mentioned a few of them kind of, in passing, and some of the opening comments, but when we look at the partners that we work with, particularly through the lens of how we bring them to our customers through the vitality program, to your point that you're making right from the whole win-win perspective, how do we choose the ones we're bringing on is we look at anything that we do really as an organization from bringing on partners, to putting on a new product, or even coming out with vitality at the end of the day, there's this really kind of magic moment when you have one company or two companies working together innovating because there is some sort of business need or societal need that needs to be met. So from our industry, particularly on the life side, we would love if our customers lived as long as they possibly could, guess what? So do they so does their family, so do their friends. Yeah. And it's better for society at large. And when that happens, that's really where the magic kind of starts because very rarely in a manufacturer to consumer, I don't care if we're talking about insurance or widgets or pens, whatever business school analogy you want to use, very rarely in the manufacturer to consumer relationship. And again, looking at this through the partnership perspective, you're usually on opposite sides of the table. The customer wants the highest quality widget at the least expensive outlay to them. The widget manufacturer wants to have their cost be as low as possible and charging the customer as much as they possibly can, but with what we're doing, we're approaching it through the lens of, does this help the customer make healthier choices? How does that impact mortality and longevity in the long, in the long term? So when we brought apple on, it was through the lens of how does apple watch enable our platform, our customers, our distributors all win win win by pushing that forward because Apple's not selling life insurance. They're not going to, it's heavily regulated high capital requirements. That's not what they do. They have no interest in doing that. So coming to us to distribute through our chains, providing additional value to customers is really, I think, a great example of how that can be win, win, win. Yeah. But through a different lens of just does this vendor relationship, which I think is oftentimes where partnerships start, is this just a vendor relationship, but how do we actually make this a partnership relationship a little bit longer term?

Leslie Marshall: (30:33)
I think that's a great point go, Matt, because the other thing I think that that technology has enabled us to do is to have that reciprocal experience. Exactly. And when we look at it again, the customer doesn't care. What my agenda is as a carrier or my partner's agenda is what they really care about is are you bringing a holistic experience? To me that makes me feel attached to those products. And so we, we think a lot about services in addition to insurance. And so our ideal state is really where we could add value, to a product or service through insurance. And then that product or service could also enhance and enable the blink customer experience. So, it would be something like cyber security, right? So, you have a partner who offers, dark web monitoring, and you allow them to provide blank, cyber as part of their subscription. And then you also with, with your customers, with the blank customers, we, promote their dark web monitoring. And that is a win-win because we wanna mitigate that loss, just like what you're doing with vitality. Exactly. And so that is the perfect marriage is when they can have, they can add value and attract more customers, and we can actually mitigate a loss experience through their product.

Donald Light: (32:08)
Okay. I mean, I like the use of the word reciprocal that you used. I mean, it's a variation, it's a variation on win-win, but it sort of deals more with experiential or you know, that you wanna, you just don't want a win. You wanna be in a relationship that's going

Leslie Marshall: (32:22)
Exactly

Donald Light: (32:23)
Find value. Exactly, I'm gonna ask Matt, a follow up question, fairly recently, Hancock announced a partnership with Allstate, with its its actual telematics program and sending which I self commercial. I blog on that, when the announcement announcement was made, but that was, to me, what was so striking about that is you guys are life, all state is property casually. And suddenly you say, I think maybe something that the a company on the big company on the PC side knows something's gonna help me and help my customers. So can you talk to just a little bit about that?

Matthew Gibson: (33:00)
Yeah. So if anyone hasn't gone through a life insurance underwriting process, more than happy to write a policy on you, first of all, second of all, one of the things that happens is an MVR report. Motor vehicle report is pulled from your state's RMV because from a life insurance perspective, if you are a not safe driver, you are far more likely to die in a car accident. So that's important to us from an underwriting perspective, very similarly to how, if you are not a safe driver from a PNC perspective, your collision, all that good stuff is big part of that narrative. So it made sense for us. And also Allstate is one of our distribution partners as well on the life side. So their 20,000 agents do also have the ability to sell our products to their customers. It made sense within the vitality program to provide credit within the vitality construct for being a Allstate drive wise safe driver.

Matthew Gibson: (33:55)
So by getting to the gentleman who was speaking on the session before this one was talking about how do you get information from a customer? So if you were a drive wise customer, not to turn this into an Allstate commercial, you know, you get a email or your billing notice that says, congratulations, you've achieved, whatever the savings that you've achieved, you can use the John hangout vitality app to snap a picture of it, or you can upload it through the website, whichever meeting the customer, where they're at from a digital perspective, we all know people's technology tolerance, let's call it ability and being able to do that is a big part of it. But that's really, I think an interesting way that we've partnered with other insurance companies, but also reaching on the other side of the aisle on the PNC and life side, really kind of being, this is a shared risk. How do we actually have this work on both sides? The equation.

Donald Light: (34:44)
Okay, great. So Sebastian, I like to ask you a question you, in your earlier remarks, you talked about Swiss free wanting to access new risk pools. And so I thinking, okay, did Swiss free is still in the business of, of bearing risk or, you know, taking on portions of other entities risks. Could you, talk a little bit more about, you know, the risk pool concept and are there some what for examples and are some of the more attractive or less attractive in terms of the partnership strategy that Swiss three is that you're working to work implement, put in practice for Swiss three?

Sebastien Bert: (35:24)
Yeah. Happy to do that, so I, look at it two ways for risk pools, like what are attractive risk pools for us? And remember we're, we're in the back of the valley chain and, you know, we rely on carriers and, other types of entities to see this reinsurance. So one it's, you know, when we're working with these digital partners, they're giving us access to business that we don't see through traditional channels. So Geico doesn't call me or swiss to seed off their auto book, right. Because that's a very low volatility and they don't need reinsurance, but a maybe an OEM and there's several of them out there that are starting to create their own insurance programs and some republics, and they're not, they need, they need help. and they they're want see it as much as possible. Right. So that's one example, you know, we're comp is another one too, where, a lot of companies carriers keep that net, right. Because it's like you don't, from a below a certain limit, the other area. And I think this is where gets really exciting is, the areas of bridging the protection gap, you know, so thinking of the uninsured and the underinsured, so that's PNC and that's mostly what I do, in our team, but also life and health. Absolutely. So, you know, a great example, I like to use about like digital partnerships and helping to bridge that protection gap is around flood insurance, right? So the numbers are still crazy and how many people need to buy flood and don't buy flood in this country and we partnered with a company called Neptune, which is an MGA, and InsureTech MGA, and they have just done a phenomenal job of selling flood. Right. And not just like coastal areas, we're talking about inland, where people didn't buy before. And it was a much better option than the N F I P, so these are new customers, new, new insurance spend new reinsurance spend, and that's how we kind of view those two lenses. Right. So it's not people swimming around in risk right. In pools. Right. So it's ironic. Cause it was flood example.

Sebastien Bert: (37:37)
Yes. Oh my God. That was terrible here

Leslie Marshall: (37:40)
To help

Sebastien Bert: (37:41)
You wanna cover dust?

Donald Light: (37:44)
Okay, great. So thank you for the deep dive, deeper, deeper dive, continue the water metaphor. So we're, we're close, close to our end point and I'd like to everybody take out your crystal balls and say five years from now, we're all sitting on this stage a little bit older, hopefully wiser, more experienced anyway. So, what's gonna change in digital partnerships? You don't please, don't say straight line, that's a little boring., but what, what do you think, I'll start with, with Leslie and how, what do you see the trajectory of the whole phenomenon and yeah. Blinking broad and more, more broadly than just blink?

Leslie Marshall: (38:23)
Sure, I mean, I think as an industry, our obligation is to create an experience for our customer that is seem as seamless as possible that doesn't have barriers, to entry that doesn't require the customer to, get frustrated or not understand what they're doing. And I think that, you know, we have been behind the curtain for a long time. Right. It's as Matt said, it's a big mystery. And so what I would like to see, what I would hope to see is that we would accelerate and think of ourselves, even though we are assuming risk, even though we are required, you know, to comply from a regulatory perspective that we don't allow ourselves to just see that as the stopping point that we would say to ourselves, let's push those boundaries, let's challenge those, traditions and see what more we can do to make that experience for the customer relevant and contextual that I keep saying that, but relevant and contextual to where they want to work with us because we've given them something of value at a time that they need it.

Leslie Marshall: (39:45)
And they don't have to go look for it. That's what I want for the industry. I don't want us to have customers have to keep looking for it. I just want it to be there for them. And that's what they want too you know, all our research says one stop shop. Don't make it hard for me. You know, give me something that I understand, plain language, and that's really, you know, that's really where I want us to go and okay. In five years I will still be here despite what my husband says,

Donald Light: (40:14)
Okay, Matt, you're crystal ball. What does it look like?

Matthew Gibson: (40:17)
Oh, man, well, I mean, similar, what, what Leslie was saying, I think the key component is we're gonna see a lot more of it, right? Like I think we all know that the neat thing about technology, and also medicine is the same way is that it grows exponentially. Like we've all seen those curves on a number of slides. People have presented at, at conferences over the years, and really in the last two years you've seen an acceleration of any sort of digital capacity. You know, we all know that customers, their expectations are set outside of this industry. That's right, right. Their expectations are set outside of the insurance industry, sorry to spoil a alert there, but like you go to Amazon, right. You click buy it. Now, if it doesn't show up tomorrow, you're upset life insurance. As an example, I have to have someone come to my house and pee in a cup and draw blood. And it is a very long process. How does that actually work? You know, the customer's expectations need to be met differently. So I think you're gonna see a lot more specifically around the customer and really compressing everything together.

Donald Light: (41:19)
Okay. And Sebastian, last word.

Sebastien Bert: (41:22)
So I'll make a quick, I know we're out of time, so I'm gonna say, around who are the players, you know, distributing products. Yeah. So I, my crystal Wallen, it's a little bit self-serving because that's what our group does, but I think you're gonna see a more and more corporates getting into the space about selling insurance. Right. And, cross-selling it, they're seeing the, how embedded finance has worked and how that is unlocked. A lot of value for companies and making their relationships stickier and creating new revenue streams. And they're looking at insurance like, wow, it's like the amount of insurance or, well, how much people spend and businesses spend on insurances. This is a huge honeypot, and the fact that everybody wants to go to the subscription model. I mean, that's what insurance is. Right. So it's gonna take time. But I think in the next five years, in terms of landscape, it's like, you know, the B, C, D E the A's are gonna be a lot more. Yes within that, that space, it's all in on that note.

Donald Light: (42:24)
Okay. Thank you. And, I'll just say that this is a game that kind of everybody can play, and maybe in some sense, almost everybody will have to play over this next five years. So I like to thank our panelists. I like to thank our audience for listening and being a great audience. And that ends our session. Thanks.